


Every YA book from 2004

by knaveofmogadore



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dystopia, F/M, Forced Heterosexuality, Imported, Parody, Writing Exercise, imported writing assignment, unrequited crushes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-09 00:22:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17396579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knaveofmogadore/pseuds/knaveofmogadore
Summary: Assignment challenge: Take a type of work you enjoy (a type of youtube video, a meme genre, a type of writing) and absolutely shred it for tropes.My choice: popular YA literature circa 2002-2014, aka the public's bland movie remake version of YAWork circa: fall 2017Any actual resemblance to a specific book was absolutely intentional, I've read as much bad YA as good





	Every YA book from 2004

**Author's Note:**

> Someone: What's your favourite thing you've ever written?  
> Me, who has been writing for almost a decade and has been making quality award winning worlds for like, five years: This. Absolutely this, hands down.

My name is Bryndolynn Starshine. I didn’t want to be the supreme elected prophesied ruler of all of my land, but I am now so that’s cool. It all started on a windy, rainy, and sunny day, in August. It was snowing. 

It was the day of the great naming ceremony, where my arbitrary and useless position in society would be decided. The Great Elders would be telling all of us how to live our eyes, because that is somehow normal and leads to a healthy and sustainable society. Don’t think about it too much. I ran through the cobble streets because I was late. I’m always late.

The naming ceremony was in a stadium in a field. We built it only for this ceremony and use it for no other purpose, despite the fact that we were downtrodden refugees from the long ago war, famine, and plague outbreak when we came here to this somehow untouched spot in a prime strategic spot for picking off civilians in the destructive war. The inside of it looked like a sports stadium, and I’m not going to use extra words to describe that because we all know what that looks like. 

There is a raised dais in the center of the field. How did we get a big stone dais into a stadium in one piece? We didn’t! It was already here with some prophecy spray painted onto the side of it. On the stone dais is a pensive, or fancy stone bowl on a pillar. We use the pensive, somehow, to decide what the teenagers are supposed to do with their life. 

Everyone is already sitting in their seats when I run in, and I take my place as last in the line of teenagers waiting for their turn on the dais. Each teen takes their turn before me mounting the dais, sticking their hand in the pensive, and declaring the first job that popped into their head. It was supposed to be what the pensive put into your head, but I am suddenly not so sure. 

When it is finally my turn, my heart pounds as I mount the single stone step, which I still manage to trip over. Everyone laughs. Everyone always laughs at me, even though I am very popular and beautiful, but I don’t really think I’m beautiful. I stand there and look out over the crowd with my hand hovering over this really gross looking water. Oh, did I mention that our perfect valley is also filled with smog because of the never ending war? Yeah we’re all covered in it. 

Anyway, I look out al all of my classmates, teachers, friends, and family, my neighbors, the stray dogs, the old people I never see except on this day, and that really weird kid that lives under a bridge because their parents hate them. Then I shout with all my impassioned fury that I have felt for a whole five minutes, “It just seems like I don't fit into our Society's prescribed categories! Maybe none of us do, and they don’t really exist outside of our preconceived notions, and this entire thing is an attempt to placate the desperate human need to put everyone in a box!” 

Cries of outrage and existential crises filled the stadium. Random guards, who I forgot to mention because I’m a teenager and I didn’t realize how weird this all was five minutes ago, came out of nowhere to pull me down from the dais. You see, the actual totalitarian government that controls our elders doesn’t like the sorting to be criticized. It sort of messes up their whole process. 

After three seconds of chaos that I’m not going to stretch out for the sake of word count, silence filled the space. The three elders, Golden, Frankincense, and Myrrh, were walking across the fake grass in their long flowing white robes. They were somehow, magically, not covered in soot and dirt like the rest of us. They were all old white men. Golden was long, with legs. Frank, we all called him Frank because we couldn’t pronounce his name, had some hair on top of his head. Myrrh, who we couldn’t agree on how to pronounce, had a nose, and skin, and sometimes his eyes sparkled. Myrr’s eyes were very disturbing, as the sparkling came from nowhere and sometimes hurt your eyes. 

“Stop this nonsense,” Golden bellowed. He always seemed to be screaming, even when it wasn’t necessary to be that dramatic. We all think he’s going deaf. 

“Preposterous! Ludicrous,” cries Frank, who really only says the things he thinks he should be saying, because like the rest of the adults he doesn’t ever know what is going on. 

“Unhand her,” yells Myrrh, with the blinding sparkle in his eyes, and is ignored. I am dragged away by the Random Enforcers of the Law, or RIL for short. 

I was put in a cell with a big girl named Patch La Rue. Patch was always getting in trouble because she fought the toughest bullies and told the teachers what she thought in a loud way. I had always looked up to her, because she was loud and the only girl in this story who never acts feminine, so I couldn’t criticize her to feel superior. 

“What are ya in here for,” she asks, trying to make conversation. I guess my unnattractive, cute pout clued her in that I was bummed. 

“I made a scene about how everything is fake and we’re all being lied to, and no one believed me because I’m a teenager. Nobody believes teenagers.”

Patch nods sage-like, “I make scenes all the time, I get that. I guess that’s why the pensieve made me community troublemaker.” 

“Is that really your job?”

Patch motioned for me to lean in close. I was wary, but I did lean in close enough to hear her if she whispered. She motioned for me to lean closer, so I did. She motioned for me to lean closer, but at that point I wasn’t sure what she meant, so she pulled me close by putting an arm around me. 

“Can I tell you a secret?”

I nod, intrigued, and wish that I could quirk an eyebrow like the cute, asshole boy at school could. 

She whispers, “I heard two thoughts when I put my hand in the pensieve. I’m,” she pauses, and I wait with a breath I didn’t know I was holding, “different.” 

“Oh-em-gee,” I say with wide eyes. 

There is a scuffling outside our cell, and then a bearded old man in a black robe appears. His hood pulls back enough to show his ever sparkling eyes. It’s Myrrh! 

“Hello,” he coughs raggedly, sounding very sick. 

“Hi,” I whisper, coming forward to wrap my hands around the bars. 

“You are a child of the prophecy,” he says in a rattling breath.

“I’m a what?”

He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. He almost looks up to the ceiling in exasperation but remembers his sparkling eyes. He clasps his hands together in front of his face and points them towards me. “The prophecy written on the stone before we moved here. You know, the stone that we couldn’t move so we built the entire town around it?”

“Oh,” I breathed, sort of knowing what he was talking about.

“Yeah, that prophecy that foretells the revolution against the dictatorship by a somehow immortal being” he warns, before keeling over and dying.   
I almost scream before muffling it in my hand. Patch comes up behind me and holds me close, comforting me. 

“Hey,” Patch says in a flirty tone that I don’t catch because I’m straight with a capital S, “Do you wanna break out and start a revolution together? We’re not like other girls, after all.”

“Yes,” I shout excitedly, with much glee. 

Our escape plan was foolproof. The only hitch in it was Chaol, the RIL station rotary. He stopped us from walking down the hallway and out of the station with our handcuffs still on. It was an easy plan because all of the adults seemed to either listen to what I said or ignored me completely. But Chaol was not an adult. In fact, he was a fellow teen protagonist. 

“Stop! Halt! Don’t do the escape thing,” he shouts down the hallway as he swaggers to us in his nerd pants and polo shirt. 

“How did you know we were escaping,” Patch says cooly, as in she’s cool.

“Because I’m a genius,” Chaol says cooly, because he’s an asshole. 

Patch pushes me behind her, but I could still see Chaol underneath the shadow of her very buff arm. “You would be cute if I were into boys.”

I had never noticed before when I had seen Chaol in school or at community sponsored events, but he was cute. He had completely clear brownish, whitish, ambiguously tanned skin. His brown curly hair was always perfectly styled. His brown eyes were the color of tree bark, and had always seemed full of deep emotional pains that he uses as excuses to be an asshole. 

Chaol scoffs at Patch’s offer. 

“If you’re going to escape, take me with you.”

I ball my fists, how dare he be so standoffish and cute? “Why should we,” I snap.

“Because,” he says, running a hand through his sandy hair, “I’m smart, and I want to help you.”

Patch and I look to each other. She looks skeptical, annoyed even, but I ignore it. I shrug noncommittally and turn back to Chaol.   
“Alright, you’re in.”

We made our way out of the community under the cover of darkness. Chaol doesn’t have very good night vision, so he kept knocking things over. Patch was certainly annoyed at this point, but I blamed it on his cool dark past of not having parents. 

We stopped by my mom’s house first so that I could change into my outfit of leather pants, a leather jacket, and a shirt that can be stylishly ripped.

“Hi mom bye mom I’m off to topple our controlling totalitarian government!”

“Alright sweetie just don’t forget to wash your hands and carry bandages! Bring home a nice boy!”

When we finally make it past the community border by squirming under a hole in the fence, we all release a breath we didn’t realize we were holding. The trek through the woods was perilous and full of trees, and deer, and big, four legged dog like creatures we had never seen before. The long slog through the snowy peaks was freezing, and Patch and I had to cuddle for warmth. Chaol, in all his perfection, was perfectly fine and emerged with no damage to his stylishly nerdy clothes. 

When we finally made it over the mountains, I stopped for a moment to wonder exactly what we were doing. Also, there was a giant desert filled with battle, like, right in front of us. Behind us, and flirty and dark sounding voice says, “Hey.”

We all answer it instinctively, then scream. The voice chuckles darkly, and then a tall, deathly pale, dark haired, red eyed boy appears before us. He waves, and I wave shyly back.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says softly.

“I think I can believe that,” I reply. 

“My name is Dark Fire,” he says, and Patch and Chaol scoff. 

Dark joins our party. He first teaches us how to make a campfire, because we made it out here without knowing basic survival skills. We all sit around the fire and eat food that he miraculously had in his backpack. After a while of laughter and bonding, Chaol smiles and starts to speak. 

“You know, I’ve never had this, since my parents died when I was so young.” He pauses and looks at the nutrition packet in his hand, “Family,” he adds. He pulls a pendant loose from underneath his short, it’s attached to a braided cord I somehow never noticed before. “This is all I have of my parents.”

We all pat him on the back, and Dark pats his hand in sympathy. My heart hurts in this moment, and I chastise myself for flirting with Dark earlier when someone already needed me to fix his heart. 

A loud booming noise echoes over the mountains. We all stand up to face this new threat. A loud screeching noise follows it, like microphone feedback  
“Hel-” a thudding noise, then quieter in the background, “is this thing on? OK.” 

A booming voice overwhelmed us, “HELLO, PREPARE TO MEET YOUR DOOM. YOU WILL NEVER SUCEED.”

“You're not the boss of us,” I yell in the general direction of everywhere. 

“I AM THE SURPREME LEADER, OF COURSE I AM.”

“How are you doing this,” Chaol shouts. 

“ITS A MEGAPHONE.”

“Oh.”

“We'll defeat you,” I shout, “You won't get away with controlling us!”  
The voice doesn't answer.

I lead us in a charge into the desert. Patch is shouting a battle cry by my side, Chaol is behind us shouting strategy, and Dark Fire is on my other side already fighting. Dark fights like he has lived his entire life in the Badlands, because he has. It was all going great, it seemed that we were cutting a path through the enemy to The Supreme Leader. A strange energy is drawing me, like a tugging deep in my chest.

Things went wrong almost suddenly. Patch is dragged away into the throng of the battle. Chaol stands up on a large rock to fight off the horde, screaming “tactical advantage” and “I have the high ground!” Dark Fire is taken down by an arrow to the chest. 

The battle raged around us and somehow no one else was hit or injured as I cradled Dark’s head in my lap. I swallow my sobs, and he begins to laugh. “What’s so funny,” I ask through my tears.

“How ridiculous my death is,” he replied.

“You’re literally dying,” I said, releasing the sob I forgot I had been holding. His eyes slide closed and I wail dramatically, but in a way I hoped Chaol thought was pretty. “Why do you have to die, we were just exploring the softer side of your character! Now no one will ever know!”

“Because,” he started, then coughed up a trail of blood from his pale pink lips. He sheds a single dramatic tear, and it travels down his deathly pale cheeks. “I-I’m gay. Don’t you know the gays always die first?” 

I go numb at his confession. “Wait, what? But you called me pretty!”

“Dude I was just being a supportive friend. Wait, did you think my gay ass was actually going to date you? Oh honey no…”

With those last words, Dark dies in my lap. I drop his body like a hot sack of potatoes because his death scene is over and we’re supposed to stop caring about him now, but also avenge his death in the final battle. It's complicated. 

We surged back together as a group and fought the battle for Dark Fire. We were an unstoppable force to be reckoned with. Finally, we were face to face with him, my arch nemesis, The Supreme Leader. He was wearing flowing leather robes and a large, goofy looking black hat covered in feathers. I stepped forward a held high the sword I took off of a dead soldier. 

“Prepare to die,” I shouted before leaping up to his wrought iron throne and aiming for his heart. He tosses me aside like a rag doll at goodwill. Patch bellows and runs up to his throne, swinging a giant axe. He shoves her over with the heel of his baby leather boots. Chaol had managed to sneak up behind his throne as we kept him distracted, and left on top of him from behind while screaming “high ground!” He tosses him to the ground. It all seemed lost, and then sounds of panic and fear ring from behind us. We all turn to watch the spectacle, eve the supreme leader stands up from his throne to see. 

Dark Fire raises to the sky and flies towards The Supreme Leader. He pulls a sword right out of his pants and stabs it into The Supreme Leader’s chest. ‘Did he have that in there the entire time,’ I think. He stands beside the flailing, gurgling body of The Supreme Leader as he flails and gurgles and dies. He holds the sword out to me and I take it, wordlessly, because I secretly don’t know how to communicate but it makes me look cool so no one notices. I gently poke the poetically described, gaping, bleeding, gory, chest wound seconds before he dies so that everyone thinks it was me who killed him. The crowd around us who didn’t help at all cheers and pops confetti poppers. 

Just before the crowd surges forward to carry me to my new throne on their shoulders I turn to Dark Fire. 

“How are you alive,” I ask. 

He sassily flips his hair and smirked a smirk that makes my stomach flip and makes me wish that he was still available for a love triangle. “I’m a vampire, I can’t die.”

“Oh,” I say simply, before being carried away by the crowd. 

I was declared the new The Supreme Ruler for all of five seconds before I decided I wasn’t about that shit. I ran for president instead, and I won anyway because it turns out that putting “the chosen one” on all of the ballots makes you pretty hard to beat. Dark Fire resurrected a boy to date. Patch is off somewhere being Patch because I, a straight girl who totally didn’t have a crush on her at all, doesn’t know what my actual big fat crush is doing with her life. Chaol and I are still in a forced straight relationship that is kind of unhealthy. Yeah, life is pretty good when a society is actually working as a society and not a bunch of old white dudes deciding everything for everyone.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm literally begging you to read anything else I've written even if you haven't read the books I wrote it for just to redeem me in your eyes.


End file.
